


Entwined In Frost

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe, Arthurian, Canon-Typical Violence, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Complicated Relationships, Dreams, Dreamsharing, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Marvel Jotunn Culture, Marvel Norse Lore, Multiverse, Non-Linear Narrative, Plot, Psychological Trauma, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-13 12:13:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14748659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: When Loki falls to Earth in a blaze of fury, desperate to escape Asgard after his heritage is revealed some decades before the events of Thor (2011), he discovers a soldier frozen in the Arctic tundra. Reminded of Odin's taking him up from his place in Jotunheimr, he drags the soldier out of the ice, and carefully revives him before sending him on his way back to his people.Steve Rogers is enchanted by the figure in blue that saved him, and finds he can't quite shake the ghost of him wherever he goes, and it turns out that Loki can't either.AKA, that AU where Steve Rogers is King Arthur and Loki is Merlin, except not really, except yes really.





	1. Chapter 1

There is a haze around him. Steve is distantly aware that he is shaking with the cold, but the cold is all-encompassing, lingering on his skin and making his teeth chatter. His skin feels hard with frost, and when he tries to open his eyes he finds he can’t quite force them all the way open: through the wet, hazy curtain of his icy eyelashes, he sees a flash of blue.

“Stay still,” says a low voice, quiet and sonorous.

Steve tries to talk, but his tongue is frozen behind his glued-shut lips, and he feels himself pass out.

❅ ❅ ❅

Lying on a bed of soft, downy pillows and thick quilts, Steve suddenly sits up. “Don’t move too quickly,” comes an instruction from across the room. He stares around, taking in the surroundings around him. The room is carved right into the ice, and it is scarcely eight feet by six, Steve’s cot to one side. The light is dim, coming from the next room, and a figure stands silhouetted by the light behind him, his face invisible. “Your body has undergone some stress.”

“Where am I?” Steve asks, surprised by the hoarseness in his voice.

“Earth.”

“Where on Earth?” The figure shrugs. Frowning, Steve shifts, looking down at his hands, and then he takes in the clothes he’s wearing. They’re made of a silken fabric, clinging to his body, a light blouse and loose trousers – he runs his fingers over it, feeling how soft it is, feeling how the outfit fits him as if tailored to his body. “How long was I out?”

 The figure stares at him for a few moments, and then gestures to two light shoes on the icy ground beside the bed. “Don’t walk with your feet bare. It will hurt you.” And then he walks away. Shifting out from underneath the quilt over him and swinging his feet onto the side of the bed: the bed is just blankets and pillows laid onto a square of ice carved out of the heavy wall, and the backs of his heels touch the remaining ice. He hisses at the cold, and he pulls on the slippers, which are lined with wool and set comfortably against his skin. Despite the ice on every side, the room itself isn’t too cold: it’s merely slightly cool. When he gets to his feet, he feels himself stumble, hit by dizziness, and sets his hand against the too-cold arch of the doorway of the little room.

Stretching out before him is a long corridor. The ice is carved out with obscene neatness, each side of the corridor perfectly symmetrical, the walls, floor and ceiling all smooth to the touch, and Steve swallows, taking a slow step forward. “Hello?” The corridor is lit by an oil lamp that emits a pleasant warmth and seems to levitate on the air in the centre of the corridor.

The figure comes into view, coming out from another niche in the ice, and he begins to walk forward. His skin is marble-white, his eyes blue, and his hair is as black as coal, hanging loose in thick, wavy strands around his shoulders. His thin lips have a permanent downturn to them, but he is perfectly well-dressed: dark breeches are tucked neatly into brown-leather boots, and he wears a silken blouse made of the same blue fabric as Steve’s own, and around his neck Steve can see a livid, purple mark of bruises, coming up to his jawline.

The stranger offers his left hand out, and Steve doesn’t take it, remaining leaning against the wall. “Who are you?” he demands, staring at the guy with suspicion on his face. He remembers taking the plane down into the ice, remembers the hard impact, the shatter of glass and the cutting out of the engine—

Christ.

A wave of dizziness hits him, and he feels his knees buckle: before he can hit the ground, two hands slip easily underneath the back of his knees and behind his shoulders, and he lets out a short sound of surprise at how easily the guy carries him. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, sure, but he’s certainly not bulky, and Steve weights two hundred and twenty _pounds_. This guy shouldn’t be able to lift him like he weighs nothing at all.

The stranger carries him into a wide-walled, high-ceilinged hall, and Steve closes his eyes tightly as he feels himself laid down on a leather bench. Heat touches against his body, and he hears the familiar crackle and quiet hum of a burning fire. He turns his head, his eyes opening, and he sees the fireplace carved of dark stone, a fire burning within it. It rests amidst the wall of ice, and yet nothing is melting.

“Look at me for a moment, please,” the stranger murmurs, and Steve does. He follows one long, slender finger as it is moved from the left to the right of his face. “Pupil dilation seems normal…” The stranger catches hold of his wrist, his thumb pressing to the pulse-point there, and Steve lets out a sigh of surprise at how cool the stranger’s hand is against his own. “So fast,” he murmurs. “But a little thready for my liking. Your heart is somewhat reluctant to return to work, after its little rest.” He’s got a British accent, Steve thinks, clipped and refined. _Peggy_ …

“Rest?” Steve repeats.

“You were frozen in the ice,” the stranger says simply. “I know not for how long. Stay here a moment.” He moves away with his head tall, his shoulders held stiffly, his hips moving as he walks, and Steve takes a moment to look around the room. He is lying on a chaise long beside the fireplace, and there is a circular, black rug between the couch and an armchair with a leather footrest matched to it. Around the room, there is more furniture – a small table of dark wood, with one chair set against it, and tall bookshelves rested against the walls, full to the brim with leather-bound tomes and texts.

What the Hell _is_ this?

And then the guy slips back in from the other room with a silver tray in his hands, pulling the footrest closer to the chaise long and setting it down beside him. On the tray there is a jug of water and a glass, and a plate of short biscuits and cheese. Steve stares down at it.

“You don’t eat these things?” the stranger asks, seeming concerned. “One moment, I—”

“It’s fine,” Steve mutters, and he takes a cracker and eats a piece of it. The biscuit is slightly salty, and he lets out a groan: suddenly, his stomach is rumbling, and he eats greedily, _desperate_ with hunger. Silently, the stranger watches him.

❅ ❅ ❅

“Are you warm enough?” the stranger asks as Steve moves slowly around his library, his eyes scanning the spines of the books. Some of them are plain in leather or cloth bindings, and others have gilded text written on their spines – none of them are in English he recognizes. None of them use an alphabet he’s familiar with, and he peers with curiosity at the different symbols and pieces of alien text.

“I’m a little cold,” Steve says. “Nothing I can’t handle. Who are you?” The stranger hesitates. He has an upper-class bearing, and something in the way he holds himself reminds Steve of Peggy, distantly. He feels something shatter inside him – where is Peggy, now? How long was Steve in the ice? Where are they? Did he make it to the Arctic?

“Loki,” he says quietly. “What is your name?”

“Steve. Steve Rogers.” He watches the other man’s face for some sign of recognition, but there is none. Loki’s face remains neutral, his lips still turned down at their edges, his blue eyes cloudy with thought. “How far under the ice are we?”

“Not so far,” Loki murmurs. He reaches for a coat stand, drawing off a cloak of thick, black fabric, and he holds it out to Steve. “Come, I’ll show you.” Steve takes up the cloak, unable to hide his confused frown (What’s with the medieval clothes, the medieval furniture?), and he sets it on his shoulders, tying it around his neck by the silken ribbon. He’s amazed at the warmth of the woollen fabric, the way it seems to tingle with heat over his skin, and he feels himself relax.

Loki is already leading the way, back into the long corridor.

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve pulls the cloak more tightly around himself, feeling the freezing wind bite and claw at his skin, and he feels it hit him hard in the face. It’s so cold that when he breathes out he sees the cloud of breath glitter as moisture in his exhalation turns to ice, and he stares out over the expanse of snow-covered glacier on every side. Loki doesn’t seem to be deterred by the cold at all.

“You found my plane?” Steve asks, quietly. He notices that despite the fireplace down below, there is no sign of a chimney for the smoke. Where is it going, he wonders? To somewhere else, somewhere hidden?

“ _Plane_ ,” Loki repeats, as if he’s never heard of one before. “Yes. Some three miles to the north-east. I can take you to the wreckage, if you should like.”

“You know how long I was out for?” Steve asks.

“You were quite frozen. It would be impossible for me to judge, based on decay or something similar; the ice retains a natural stasis of that which it takes for its own.” There’s something weird about the phrasing of that, the way the guy personifies the ice, that feels distinctly foreign, and weird.

“Who are you?” Steve asks again – for the third time, now. Loki looks at him for a long few moments.

“We ought inside,” he says quietly. “This climate is too cold for your biology.”

❅ ❅ ❅

“Tomorrow morning,” Loki says quietly, crouching to add two logs of wood to the fire, “I will take you to your crash site. There is too much wind today for us to move over the tundra safely, but tomorrow the winds will die down some. I will be able to warm the equipment within your _plane_ sufficiently for it to be able to work, and I ought be able to do so without allowing your electronics to become ruined by the moisture. I noticed some primate radio equipment and the like; you may be some ways away from the closest human contact, but any mayday call ought be picked up by satellites.”

“Satellite?” Steve repeats. “What’s a satellite?” Loki tilts his head, and the motion is so subtly inhuman, so subtly _off_ , that Steve takes a step back. Loki’s gaze flits down toward Steve’s slippered feet, and then back up to his face, but if he’s offended, he doesn’t show it.

“You’ve been in the ice for some time,” Loki decides, and he turns away from Steve. Watching him pick through the books on the shelves, Steve examines Loki properly, takes him in. His clothes are finely-made and carefully tailored to his body, with barely any stitches showing, but they’re old-fashioned. _Way_ old-fashioned. There are no buttons, no straps, and the buckles on his boots are just leather strips passed through a latch of silver. For all appearances, he lives out here in the Arctic completely alone, and yet all the walls are completely flat, symmetrical – machine-made, they have to be. And that wound on the side of his neck… There are no scabs and no visible breaks in the skin, but the bruise is _vibrant_ , and Steve can see that it’s new, and still healing. It must be painful.

“How long have you been here?” Steve asks, quietly. Loki’s cloak is still around his shoulders, resting warm against his skin, and he feels himself huddle in it as Loki turns to look at him, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“Around one month, I think,” Loki says, not seeming certain. “The length of a day is not the same from one planet to the next, but I think I have the measure of it here on Earth.” Steve takes that in, feels the fact settle cold and hard inside his brain.

“You’re not from here, then? Earth?” Loki shakes his head. “You look human.”

“My species predates yours,” Loki says. “Technically, you look Æsir.” As he says it, Loki flinches visibly, his hand going up to the wound on his neck as if he’s been physically struck, and his expression sours, a half-snarl pulling at his lip. “Excuse me,” he says harshly, and his leather boots slap hard against the floor as he makes his way down the corridor.

❅ ❅ ❅

“Loki!” Steve calls, hearing the eerie echo of his voice against the walls and high ceiling. “Is there a bathroom?”

“Two arches down the corridor, and to your left.” Steve steps into the bathroom, and he feels his lips part in awe. Set inside a frame of transparent ice is a huge bath made of what looks like white quartz, with taps made of shining silver. The toilet looks more familiar, at least – a bench of dark wood set over a hole in the ice, and Steve looks down it… Nothing. The carved tunnel goes deeply down into the ice, its end hidden in shadow, and Steve stands up straight, awkwardly unlacing his trousers to pee.

It feels weird, the sound of it echoing down the carved tunnel, and then he shakes himself off, pulling back and tucking himself back into the trousers. There’s no underwear, and the idea of this _stranger_ putting clothes on him unnerves him on the basest level.

He steps toward the bath, dragging his fingers over the smoothness of the quartz, feeling it cold to the touch.

Steve walks out into the corridor. “Loki?” Again, the awful echo, uncomfortable and unnatural.

“Here.” Loki is standing in the corridor, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. His voice doesn’t echo at all – that’s a warning sign, a warning sign that cuts Steve right to the bone. Steve stares at the mark on his neck – it’s opened up in one place right over the side of his neck, and lilac blood wells thick to the surface.

“You’re bleeding,” Steve says. Loki’s eyebrows furrow, and his fingers go to the side of his neck. He stares at the blood on his fingers, his mouth open. “What happened?”

“I took a fall,” Loki mutters, and steps back into the room he’d come from. Steve follows him inside, and he sees Loki’s bedroom. The bed isn’t like Steve’s own, covered with blankets and quilts – it’s made of hard quartz, like the bath, and there isn’t even a pillow. Against the wall is a writing desk, set with a vanity mirror, and he watches as Loki looks at his reflection in the shining silver, drawing his fingers over the wound. It knits itself shut before Steve’s eyes.

“What’d you do?” Steve asks, lowly. “Land on your neck?”

“I fell on a sword,” Loki replies. Steve watches with fascination as something comes out of his fingers, some shining energy that presses itself through the lines of purple marks, carefully clearing them away. As soon as he pulls his hand away from his neck, however, the marks return, biting into the flesh, and he hears Loki hiss in pain. “Come, to the— to the other room. We can talk, if you wish, or play chess.”

“You know how to play chess?” Steve asks, leaning forward, and Loki nods. “Uh— I’m not too good.”

“Nor I,” Loki admits. “Tell me— Tell me about Earth. I haven’t been here in some years.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?” Loki’s soft smile is visible in the mirror.

“A long time back.”

❅ ❅ ❅

They don’t talk. Steve takes up a book full of carefully detailed illustrations of some distant city. Every single page has text in a language he doesn’t understand, but the paintings… God, they’re beautiful. They’re made in some alien watercolour, and they show the city’s tall spires, the cobbled streets, the groups of people in the marketplace…

“What’s this?” he asks, turning the book around. Loki glances up from where he is curled in the armchair, his legs beneath him, and he looks at the illustration, his eyes flitting to the caption. He translates the foreign, swirling letters as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“ _The timepieces of Gastalt-Enia are some of the most respected in the galaxy. Illustrated is a pocket-timepiece that will show in synchronicity the time and season across the seven planets of the Fon System, as well as displaying the universal time and stardate.”_ Steve looks back at the watch, seeing its eight cog-worked circles of brass-like metal, inscribed with all kinds of symbols. “The Fon System is lovely,” Loki adds. “It’s primarily inhabited by Faseelans, as well as Nakomians and the Ansari. There hasn’t been war on any planet in the Fon System for over four thousand years.”

“Wow,” Steve says. No war for four thousand years… He stares down at the painting, drawing his fingers over the lines of the watch. “What do you think they’re doing right?”

“No one of the Fon system believes himself worth more, or more intrinsically deserving, than another.” Loki stares down at his own book, and he looks very sad, just for a second, before neutrality schools his features again.

“Is there war on your planet?” Steve asks.

“My people—” Loki stops. He bites down on his lower lip, worrying the pink skin under his teeth. “It is complicated.” _You’re damn right it’s complicated_ , Steve almost says. _You’re an alien._ But that’s not really the weirdest thing about this.

“How long ‘til night time?”

“Are you tired?” Loki asks. “You ought sleep, if you are. My magic could only do so much to assail the damage to your body.” _Magic_. Yeah, that might be the weirdest thing about it. And yet the way he’d seen the energy that came out of Loki’s fingers, healing the wound… Steve’s heard of _mutants_. But this seems like something else.

“Nah, I’m not tired,” Steve mutters. “Just— It feels weird. I feel like I should be rushing around, trying to contact somebody.”

“I’m sorry,” Loki says in a murmur, closing his book and setting it aside. “The wind— Ordinarily, I would be able to shield you, but I am quite weak. It would do _me_ no damage, but I know not how to operate your equipment, how I might contact your fellows…”

“And if the radio’s shot?” Steve asks. He speaks in a voice so quiet he can barely hear it. “If we can’t contact anybody?”

“I’ll take you to the closest populated city, once I’m able.”

“And how would you do that? You have some kinda aircraft out here?” Loki chuckles.

“Something like that.” His smile is small and private, and Steve finds it softens his face – all at once, Loki looks _young_ , and vulnerable. It makes Steve’s heart skip a beat, and he feels genuine _sympathy_ make itself known. Here this guy is, just a kid, stranded on a foreign planet…

“How old are you?” Steve asks.

“Old.”

“You don’t look old.”

“I don’t look like anything that I am.” Steve blinks, and then watches as Loki draws a complicated timepiece out of his pocket – it sure as Hell doesn’t look like a watch, made of some kinda stone and flashing with continuously shifting lights, but it doesn’t look like the thing from the Fon system either. “The night is drawing near. Come, we shall eat.” Steve stands to follow Loki, and Loki leads him down _two_ corridors this time – God, he’s only been here a _month_ , how the Hell did he do all this? – and then his eyes widen in surprise.

“What _is_ that?”

“Uh—” Loki hesitates. “I know not what it is called. It has canine attributes, but the flesh is blubbery and thick.” The seal is neatly separated into its salient parts, and it’s obvious Loki is no stranger to butchering animals. “The meat is thick, but it is full of nutrients. Little grows out here. There is some hare left, or fish… Do you not eat meat?” Immediately, Loki is moving forward, and he draws open a cabinet, furrowing his brow as he rifles through it. “I have scant fruit to hand, or there is some sea weed, but I—”

“I eat meat,” Steve says. “I was just, um, I was just surprised. You had crackers and cheese earlier, I guess I didn’t think about the food out here.”

“Ah,” Loki says. Still in a crouch upon the ground, he turns to look at Steve. “I wanted to offer something I knew would be light to the palate. That was the last of the cheese I had in my pack, I’m afraid. There are dry crackers, if you’d prefer.”

“You coulda just let me die out there,” Steve says, suddenly. “You coulda just left me.”

“I could have,” Loki says steadily.

“Why didn’t you?” Loki’s tongue flits out and wets his lower lip, and then he gets to his feet, holding a loaf of bread wrapped in soft cloth. Delicately, he draws out two fillets of the seal meat, and he sets them over a flickering flame that he ignites with a spark. He doesn’t answer the question, and Steve doesn’t press it.

❅ ❅ ❅

Seal is… _Different_. Steve’s eaten a Hell of a lot of liver in his life time, and it’s a little bit like that, but with a fishy note to it. As soon as he’s finished eating that, and the thick, wholemeal bread that Loki has, spread over with a rich, creamy butter, he’s exhausted. He feels himself lulling as he lies back on the chaise long, by his full belly and the warm heat of the fire beside him.

“You should sleep there,” Loki murmurs, and Steve glances up as Loki draws one of the blankets he’d been under when he’d woken up over his body. Steve stares down at its pattern, which makes up a wintry palace, shrouded in white mist.

“D’you make this?” Steve asks. “It feels homemade.”

“My daughter made it,” Loki murmurs, his fingers drawing over the woollen fabric – over Steve’s shoulder, and Steve shivers. “My wife’s people never had blankets, and so I taught her to weave, to sew, myself.”

“How old is she?” Steve asks.

“Old,” Loki says, and something breaks in his face. For a terrifying second, Steve thinks the stranger is going to start crying, but he doesn’t. “I will speak to you come morn,” he says, slightly hoarsely, and as he walks away from Steve, huddled in the cloak and in the quilt, the lanterns dim. Steve is left in the dim, warm light that comes away from the fire, and despite himself, despite his curiosity, he feels his eyes draw shut.

❅ ❅ ❅

Loki provides him with fur-lined boots and a thick jumper to put on, as well as Loki’s cloak. “Gloves,” Loki says, and Steve awkwardly pulls them on. They’re supple and made of some kind of green leather – the fingers are too long for his own, and his hands are bigger than the gloves are made for ( _they must be tailored to his hands_ ) but Steve had felt how freezing it was outside yesterday, and he knows if Loki is insisting on it, it’s best for him to be properly outfitted.

Loki reaches out, drawing the hood over Steve’s head, and then he catches on some lining Steve hadn’t noticed before – an extra loop of thick, woollen fabric that will pass over his mouth and keep the hood up.

“Are you ready?” Loki asks seriously. Steve nods.

❅ ❅ ❅

It isn’t a long walk, but it _feels_ long. The snow is thick beneath them, and Steve finds he has to stamp his boots _hard_ into it to keep his purchase. Loki walks beside him, wearing only his light shirt, and it is obvious to Steve that he doesn’t feel the cold _at all_. Is this how cold the planet he came from is?

By the time they reach the wreckage, Steve’s teeth are chattering, and he stops for a second, staring. The plane had hit hard into the ice, but more had obviously grown over it since it had crashed – the plane is fifteen feet lower than the shelf of ice they’re on, and it’s plain to Steve that Loki had dug into the ice to reach him.

Loki steps down from the shelf, and Steve thinks, initially, that his eyes must be playing tricks on him, that there’s a staircase he hadn’t seen, but no, no, Loki is walking on the _air._ Steve’s surprise must show in his eyes, because Loki says, “I am known as Skywalker, on some worlds. Give me your hand.” Loki supports Steve as he steps down, and he hears the _crunch_ of new snow beneath his feet as he lands on the plane’s frozen carapace.

Swinging himself through the broken glass and down into the cockpit, he reaches for the ignition— Nothing.

Loki steps neatly down beside him, and Steve watches as blue ribbons of energy seep out from his palms, tangling themselves in the dashboard of the plane’s control unit. Slowly, _slowly_ , the lights begin to flicker back to life, and he hears the crackle of static on the radio. He looks to Loki, who nods his head.

Grabbing at the receiver, he says, “Mayday, mayday. This is Captain Steven Rogers, service number 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-0. Requesting assistance at unknown co-ordinates, broadcasting on all frequencies. Mayday, mayday.” He looses his hold on the button. There is more crackling from the radio, and makes a face, turning the dial – more static, on static.

“Try again,” Loki murmurs.

“There’s no point,” Steve mutters, shaking his head. “I set co-ordinates for the damned Arctic – we’re too far off for anyone to read us. Maybe if I could amplify the frequency somehow—”

“Try again,” Loki presses. “ _I’ll_ amplify it.” More cords of blue ribbon are shimmering on the air, and Steve inhales.

“Mayday, mayday,” he says again, holding the receiver so tightly he can feel the plastic creak. “This is Captain Steve Rogers, service number—”

“This is SHIELD operative Phil Coulson. Did you say _Steve Rogers_?” Steve feels euphoria burst in his chest, and Loki nods his encouragement for him to keep talking on the line.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s me, _Steve Rogers_ , service number 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-0. Listen, my plane went down somewhere in the Arctic. I can’t give you co-ordinates, but I—”

“We have you. Someone’ll come get you within twenty.”

“Twenty hours?”

“Twenty minutes.” Steve sags with relief, and he takes his hand off the receiver.

“Loki, I—” But Loki is gone.

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve sits up in the chair, staring at the electronic clock on Alexander Pierce’s wall. He doesn’t look at the time ( _9:13_ ), doesn’t look at the date ( _05/05)_ , looks at one thing only. The year says _1988._ 1988\. The year _1988_.

“Take me through it again,” Pierce says, quietly. Steve sighs, putting his head in his hands.

“I woke up in a room carved out of ice. There was a guy there, called Loki—”

❅ ❅ ❅

Breathing heavily, Loki lies on his side on the bed he had crafted for himself from hard stone, feeling the ache in his bones. Too much seiðr used at once, too much woven upon the air – and then he had had to flee so quickly, running away from the man he had found in the ice. Loki’s skin is chalky and damp to the touch, and pain _flares_ from the slow-healing wound in his neck – the wound has split once more.

He has been stupid indeed in the past two days – foolish, and sentimental, and—

Loki hisses in pain, and he presses his face into the comforting cool of the stone beneath him. All will be well. _All will be well_.

“Perhaps I shall die here,” Loki mutters to himself as he closes his eyes. He is surprised by how comforting the words are.

❅ ❅ ❅

Loki wakes some thirty hours later, a headache splitting open his skull, but the wound in his neck healed closed.

Lilac blood is congealed on the stone bed beneath him, and he stumbles as he pulls himself up, awkwardly making his way to the bathroom. It is scarcely a journey of twelve feet, but he falls and feels his knees weak as he moves, and he clumsily drops into the black quartz of the bed, dragging a weak hand at the tap.

Arctic water gushes over his legs, and he sighs his desperate relief at the cold that seeps against his flesh. He has lost his form again, as he did carrying that boy out of the ice – his flesh is bright blue, scored with the markings of the Jötnar, and he cannot bring himself to care. When his head isn’t throbbing, yes, _then_ he shall put aside the energy to loathe himself.

For now?

For now, he is going to bathe, and think of _nothing_.

( _He is unsuccessful. Every time he schools his mind to blankness, he thinks of the human Steve Rogers, sleeping on the chaise long beneath a quilt of Hel’s design, or staring with awe at Loki’s ill-kept pantry, or standing with a radio in his hand, sheer joy at being found on his face.)_

Loki dips his head beneath the water, and he feels the salty weight of it, feels its freezing touch against his flesh—

The man on the radio, the SHIELD agent. He’d recognized Rogers’ name.

A fellow in the ice, amidst a destroyed aeroplane, crashing upwards of thirty years ago, if the satellites in orbit of Earth are anything to go by, and the young man on the radio had _recognized_ him, had been excited, even.

So curious. And Loki is in _desperate_ need of curiosities to distract him these days. Opening his eyes, he stares at the water through the haze of red his outer, protective lenses creates, and he blows bubbles in the water.

Captain Steve Rogers, service number 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-0.

At least Loki knows _somebody_ on this abysmal planet.


	2. Chapter 2

“You didn’t find him, then?” Steve asks the agent. The guy turns to look at him, and he shakes his head. He’s a tall man, dark-skinned with a goatee and a light moustache around his mouth, and he shrugs his shoulders, pointing back to the board. 1988 has… Computers. A few monitors are sitting on a desk against the wall, displaying lines upon lines of continuously shifting streams of data, most of it beyond Steve’s comprehension.

“Nah. I got the trainees on it, but we combed the ice, including where you said, about two miles out from the crash site… Nothing.” The agent frowns, furrowing his heavy brow and twisting the shape of his mouth. “Pierce thinks you’re lying. I don’t. Damned stupid thing to lie about, if it was a lie.” The agent turns around, looking Steve up and down, and then he puts out his hand. There are a few marks and callouses across the pink palm, and Steve takes it, shaking it firmly. “Fury, Nicholas J.”

“Steve Rogers.” Fury barks out a short, amused huff of laughter.

“Yeah, I know. Trainee who answered your radio – you met him face-to-face yet? Coulson?” Steve shakes his head, and Fury chuckles.

“Yeah, he’s your biggest fan. Good luck prying the kid from your side once he meets you. This Loki guy… You’re sure he was an alien?”

“That’s what he said,” Steve murmurs as he pulls his hand back, setting both hands loosely behind his back as he looks over the dark screens and their shifting fields of text. “He could have been lying, I guess, but I don’t think so. I kinda got the impression he was expecting to be alone for a long time. I don’t really get why he pulled me out like he did.”

“People do weird shit when they’re in a bind,” Fury says, and then he shrugs his shoulders. “Come on. I’ll show you to some of the trainees, introduce you to the force.”

“What happens now?” Steve asks quietly. “There’s no… Look at all this stuff. I met Turing and I saw his machine and the women that ran it, but this, this is… So different. The world’s moved on from Captain America.”

“It’ll move back,” Fury says simply. After a moment’s hesitation, Steve nods, and follows him from the room.

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve stands in the middle of the wood, and he strides forward with confidence. At his back, he feels the weight of his shield, and hanging from his left hip he feels his sword, hilted smoothly against the length of his thigh. His armour clinks quietly with each step, mingling with the quiet rustle of the grass, leaves and twigs beneath his feet.

Coming to a clearing, where the grass is trodden down in a perfect circle, where no tree or weed or shrub dares break the invisible line of magical influence, he looks at the altar in the centre. Sunlight shines down, reflecting off the white quartz and making it shimmer and glitter, and he steps forward, looking into the bowl of white marble that rests on its stop.

The bowl is filled with thick, lilac liquid – blood.

“I call upon the sorcerer of the wood,” he says sharply, his voice ringing through the silence of the forest. Birds might sing, and insects might chirp, but neither sound dares to break the law of the circle, where all must be quiet. The air is disturbed, and suddenly Loki stands across from him. Where Steve’s hands, gloved in gauntlets and resting loosely upon the quartz, are spread with their palms down, Loki’s own mirror his: Loki’s hands are clad in green leather, and he wears robes of flowing green fabric. Silver accents shine at his wrists and in his flowing hair, and as a result of the low cut of the robes’ neck, Steve can see the livid purple marks still around Loki’s neck. “Loki.”

“My prince,” Loki says delicately, his tone quietly reserved, although his eyes glitter with amusement. He looks at Steve as if he has never seen him before, as if he has never seen the silver armour of a knight of the realm. “What brings you to my altar?”

Steve stares at him. “I don’t know,” he says suddenly.

“How awkward,” Loki murmurs. “And from what land do you hail?”

“America.”

“America,” Loki repeats, and he turns, glancing at the wide woods, the green canopy above their heads, and then over the undergrowth, which is lush and thick. “We are some ways from America, your highness.”

“Really?” And yet he knows Loki to be right. This is _Camelot_ , not America – where would America even be?

“I would place us in Wales or England.” Steve frowns. That sounds wrong and right at the same time, the answer Loki gives simultaneously clicking into place and feeling wrong. “Tell me, my dear. What is your father’s name?”

 _Joseph_ , Steve thinks.

“Uther,” Steve says. Loki’s lip twitches, and inside his mouth Steve can see a glint of silver: his tongue seems to be made of the stuff, molten and shifting in his mouth. Above them, the sun gets brighter, and Steve flinches, closing his eyes as it gets brighter.

“Until next time, your highness,” Loki says, laughing as he does so.

“But I—”

He is cut off as the sun gets even brighter.

❅ ❅ ❅

Dazedly, Steve sits up in bed, rubbing hard at his eyes and looking around the bedroom of his apartment in Brooklyn. SHIELD had set him up here, and Steve is grateful for a space of his own, grateful to be able to settle into a space of his own.

He’d been dreaming… But he can’t remember what about.

Weird.

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve walks through the halls of the palace, his leather boots making a quiet tap-tap as they hit against the grey stone. He is aware of the rustle of his clothes, of the loudness of his sword clinking against his belt, of every single sound he makes. Beside him, his head held high and his green robes trailing upon the ground, Loki doesn’t make a single sound.

“How do you do that, Loki?” Steve demands. Loki arches an eyebrow, looking at him sardonically.

“Do what, your highness?”

“You don’t make a _sound_. Your leather boots leave no footsteps behind them, your skirts and tunic don’t rub against one another… The chains around your neck should clink, at least!” Loki glances down, and he looks at the several silver necklaces and pendants he wears around his neck: there is a tilt of his head, the movement subtly inhuman, but no more than Steve is used to. He frowns, as if perplexed, and then his easy smile returns.

“My dear prince,” Loki says mildly. “You ought not draw attention to these things. I am as I should be; your advisor, and nothing more.”

“Father will notice,” Steve decides, and he feels a hint of fear thrill through him at the thought. “Manufacture the sound if you have to.” Loki comes to a stop, and Steve hears the soft _click_ of his necklaces against one another as he does, his leather boot tapping quiet against the stone.

“Do not worry yourself,” Loki murmurs. “I offer Uther Pendragon much he could not live without: my sorcery is more a boon to him than a danger.” Steve feels himself _shock_ inside, and he shoves Loki back against the wall. Loki lets out a noise of startled surprise, his long hair tangling in his jewellery as his shoulders hit hard against the stone, and he glances down at Steve’s hand, which is bare and pressed flat against Loki’s chest. It feels _right_ to be touching Loki like this, and he can feel Loki’s rapidly rising and falling chest, feel Loki press into the touch.

“It doesn’t matter what I or my father think of your—” Steve lowers his voice. “Your magic. If the people were to know, you would be _burned_ , killed. You need to be careful.” Loki inhales, his nostrils flaring as he does so, and then he parts his lips. Steve is aware of the cold that radiates from Loki in the way heat radiates from most men, and he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on their ends.

“Yes, my prince,” Loki murmurs with great deference, his blue eyes aimed down at Steve’s wrist and hand, not at his face. Carefully, he gives a short bow of his head. “I will be careful.”

“Good,” Steve mutters, and he walks away. He is surprised by the way his heart pounds in his chest at the very thought of Loki at the mercy of the people of America—

Camelot.

Steve blinks, feeling himself stop short in the castle corridor.

“Wake up,” Loki whispers in his ear, his breath like an icy wind.

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve runs twenty-six miles that day. His mind is constantly wandering, distracted thoughts tumbling in his head. He keeps thinking of Loki down in the ice, and he feels like there’s more to the situation that what he knows… Surely he’d be able to contact him, to track him, somehow?

“And you said he’s from a species called the Ice-Eer?” repeats the young agent. He is thinking carefully, tapping the back of his pen against his clipboard as Steve towels himself off, pulling a shirt over his head.

“That’s what he said. He seemed pretty comfortable in the ice, so I guess it makes sense. He said he’d been to Earth before, but for a long time. The furniture seemed kinda medieval, maybe older. King Arthur style, you know – bookshelves, scrolls and leatherbound books, wooden furniture.” Something is catching in Steve’s memory, something he can’t quite put his finger on. King Arthur?

“I know this other trainee, except she got picked for the SWORD program, which is this whole new subsection of SHIELD – the Sentient World Observation and Response Department.”

“SWORD, yeah,” Steve murmurs. “I talked to one of their agents…” He feels his hand go to his hip. There’s nothing there except the belt loop of his trousers. “You, uh, keep up the good work, Coulson.”

“Great!” Coulson _grins_ , his eyes shining brightly, and he almost bounces to his feet, looking so excited at such a small piece of praise that it’s genuinely a little embarrassing. Steve likes Coulson – the kid is young, bright-eyed and eager to please, but…

“And, uh, Coulson?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t come and talk to me when I’m in the showers again.” Coulson stares around the changing room, his lips parted. He hadn’t been ogling Steve or anything, but nonetheless, it’s a little uncomfortable. Kid needs to learn some boundaries – but then, SHIELD seems to focus on workaholics.

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Won’t do this again.”

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve’s knuckles rap against the heavy oak door of Loki’s quarters, which are their own, self-contained section of the palace grounds. Loki has his own small kitchen, his own modest library, and even a walled-off section of garden in which he grows his herbs and vegetables, keeping a goat and a handful of chickens.

The door opens. A sheen of sweat shines on Loki’s face, his skin tinged lilac with an alien blush, and he is scarcely dressed. He wears only a light, white blouse and the underskirt of his robes. Steve feels his mouth fall open, and he stares at the older man, unable to drag his thoughts together and force them to gather on his tongue.

“My prince,” Loki says hurriedly, pulling his shirt open in an attempt to hide his hairless, flushed chest, but the sweat has made the sheer blouse positively transparent, and Steve can see the dusky pink of his nipples. “Have you need of me?” Steve’s mouth is dry as he turns his head away, looking at a red-knit tapestry upon the wall to keep from looking at Loki himself.

“The potion for Lancelot’s torn elbow, you said—”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Loki turns away, his bare feet making no sound at all on the stone foor ( _I told him!_ ), and he grabs at a glass cannister of ointment, pressing it into Steve’s palm. “You caught me… In the middle of a ritual.”

“A ritual,” Steve echoes, not meaning to sound disbelieving, but sounding so all the same. He glances past Loki, looking for evidence of a partner, but all he can see is the tangled blankets of Loki’s bed. The marks upon his neck are more purple than ever.

“These dreams are more a burden on myself than on _you_ , you know,” Loki says harshly, but the cryptic statement does not land to needle at him, if that is its purpose. Steve stares at him, feeling his head tilt back slightly as he tries to unpack what Loki just told him.

“What?” Steve says. “What dreams?” Loki’s face freezes, and his marble features shift as he looks Steve in the eye.

“Part of the ritual,” he mutters, shrugging his shoulders. “My apologies, I ought not have lost my temper. I am under much stress as of late – your father asks much of me.” Something about the explanation rings false, but Loki is sighing, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair, and he shakes his head. “My apologies,” he says again.

“It’s okay,” Steve murmurs, holding the ointment in his hand and looking down at the dark yellow gel. “So he just rubs this on the wound?”

“Yes, indeed. Follow the marks of strain beneath the skin. And don’t put any of it in anybody’s mouth,” Loki advises dryly. Steve nods, and he moves hurriedly down the corridor, away from Loki’s quarters. As he moves away, he realises he had been able to smell the musk of Loki’s sex-stained skin, and he is almost upset to lose the scent of it.

❅ ❅ ❅

Loki stands on the pier at Coney Island. Steve sees the dark hair shining in the wind, sees the paleness of his skin, and he takes a few steps forward. He is sure, at first, that it must be some other guy with dark hair and white skin, but it isn’t, he realises as he comes closer. Loki wears a deep blue blouse tucked into wine-coloured trousers, and when Steve approaches him, he holds out a hand.

A scoop of ice-cream on a cone – vanilla.

Steve laughs, despite himself, and he takes the cone. Loki’s small smile quirks up at the edges, and he looks out over the water of the Atlantic, which is choppy. The scent of seaspray is thick in Steve’s nostrils, and he feels himself inhale deeply as he looks at Loki’s neck.

“The mark healed?” Steve asks.

“No,” Loki murmurs. “I’m merely hiding it.”

“They couldn’t find you,” Steve says, taking a long lick of the ice cream.

“I don’t wish to be dissected by your government’s agents in the name of Midgardian science,” Loki replies lightly. His hands settle loosely on the bannister of the pier, and he turns to glance sidelong at Steve, looking him up and down as if Steve is some sort of puzzle for him to figure out. “You won’t tell them?”

“No,” Steve murmurs. “You’re probably right, to be frightened of them.” Loki chuckles.

“Perhaps one day,” he murmurs. “I was forced to abandon what home I had made. I am here now, in New York.”

“It’s as good a place as any, I guess.”

“Have you ever been to England?” Steve frowns.

“Yeah, of course,” he says softly. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Loki murmurs. Steve focuses on the ice cream, feeling its sweet thickness on his tongue, the taste simple but satisfying. He feels that he should have a thousand questions, that he should be interrogating Loki on absolutely everything, but he doesn’t. Nothing really comes to mind, to ask him, and so he keeps his focus on the ice cream instead.

“Thank you,” he says finally. “For saving me. And, uh, for the ice cream.”

“It’s nothing,” Loki replies. He is distracted. His eyes scan the horizon as if he thinks an invasion fleet will be coming in at any moment, and his fingers tap impatiently against the wood of the pier’s edge; behind them, fairground music is heavy on the wind, and Steve wonders what it was that made him walk out this way. Did he know Loki would be here, somehow? No. He just wanted to see the beach. Remember the old days. “How are you sleeping, as of late?”

“Fine,” Steve murmurs. “I’m not injured or anything – you did a great job defrosting me, my doctor said. I sleep right through the night.”

“No strange dreams?” Steve shrugs his shoulders.

“I don’t really remember any.”

“I see.” Loki seems to relax marginally, and then he reaches out, touching Steve’s shoulder. His hand is cool to the touch, sending an electric thrill to Steve’s every _organ_ , and Steve glances down at it. Loki’s hand on his shoulder feels ineffably, unexplainably _right_ , as if Steve has been waiting for this physical connection all his damn _life_. Judging by the expression on Loki’s face, he feels something similar, because alarm and then grim understanding passes over his face in the space of a half-second each, and he draws his hand back. “I merely want to tell you an important fact about myself. I do not _sweat_ , Steven.”

“Uh, okay?” Steve replies, awkwardly. Loki chuckles, and Steve is surprised by the change it makes to his face, making him seem younger, more healthy. “Do you want your cloak back?”

“No,” Loki murmurs. “Keep it.” Turning away, Loki begins to walk up the boardwalk, and Steve can see his boots hitting the ground, but he doesn’t hear them.

“ _Loki_ ,” Steve says warningly, and then he can hear Loki’s footsteps, but— Why the Hell had he said that? He glances to the ice cream in his hand, and he returns to eating it, wondering why he had been so stupid as to accept it in the first place.

What is going on?

❅ ❅ ❅

Loki is reading when he feels the growing-familiar haze overtake him, and he quickly marks his page in the book, setting it aside. The strength of Steve Rogers’ dreams is strange, coming suddenly and quickly inspiring Loki to unconsciousness if he is not already sleeping, and try as he might, Loki has not yet found a way to reverse or break the connection he has drawn between them. Foolishness! It is the _foolishness_ of Loki that has led to this mess.

And how odd this new reality is.

Loki feels himself bleed into existence in the throne room of his royal majesty, Uther Pendragon, standing with his hands loosely clasped in front of his belly. It had been most unnerving, the last time.

Loki had been rather _indisposed_ , allowing himself the pleasure of his own hand in the midst of his bath, and Steve Rogers’ own mind had altered that state as _sweat_ , and what an uncomfortable sensation that had been, feeling moisture come from within his own _pores_! An ugly thing, to sweat, an uncomfortable thing indeed, but he hopes he has forced the fact of his own biology into the other man’s unconsciousness now.

He has done what research he can. He has read up on this great _Captain America_ , and how he was lost to the ice some forty years hence, and he has done his best to research this _King Arthur_ (or _Prince_ , as it happens) that Steve has imagined himself as.

The doors open wide, and in marches Steven Rogers, his shining shield at his back, his sword doused in blood. He throws a head upon the ground when he reaches the base of the steps Uther Pendragon’s throne is set upon: a head of scarlet, leathery skin. _Red Skull_ , the old nemesis of Captain America.

“The monster is defeated, sire,” Steve says, crouching into a low bow.

“Loki?” Uther says quietly, and Loki takes a flowing step forward, taking the head up into his hands. The flesh is rubbery to the touch, and cold: Loki glances into the dark, blank eyes of the Red Skull, and he sees that the man is most certainly dead, with no seiðr or science that could revive him. Nonetheless, Loki shall turn this skull to dust once he is within the safety of his quarters – Loki knows that magic in Camelot must be done carefully, lest he be discovered a witch by the people, who fear such power.

“Quite dead, my king,” Loki says quietly, and he draws a small sack from his pocket, dropping the head within and drawing its strings shut. “He has done well.” He sees Steve’s lip twitch as he keeps his gaze down on the red carpet, and King Uther stands, stepping forward.

He settles his hand on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve looks up at him, pride shining in his features. “You’ve done well,” Uther echoes. Is this man modelled on Steve’s true father, Loki wonders? Perhaps. He has sandy, blond hair and pink lips, the crease around his lips very pronounced. They don’t look especially alike, but Loki does not look like his own children with Angrboða, most of the time, and even Narfi and Valí had escaped his looks, taking on Sigyn’s almond-shaped eyes and smiling lips, her beautiful, golden skin, instead of his pallor and thin features.

“Thank you, sire,” Steve says, and at Uther’s allowance, he rises.

When Loki begins to move from the throne hall, holding the head in his hand, Steve rushes to follow him, settling into step beside him. In this universe, in this strange seiðr-twisted dream world that Loki’s magic has made of Steve’s subconscious, Loki has known Steve since he was but a boy – Loki had led to Steve’s conception.

“What will you do with it?” Steve asks.

“Burn it,” Loki answers simply. “And then I shall grind the bones to a dust.”

“Good.” Try as Loki might, he cannot puzzle out why the magic has chained him to Steve in the way that it has, why his magic has tethered them together. It must have happened, he thinks, when he healed the young man, and then strengthened the connection between them when a sudden, physical distance occurred…

But what a manifestation of a life debt is _this!_ Another reality, growing and building in the spaces where Steve dreams, a strange pastiche of the mythology of King Arthur, the once and future king. And how it is growing – every night, Loki feels the world around him feel more solid, more bound in the physical, and the times he spends in Camelot are longer.

And Steve doesn’t recall them when he wakes. What does _that_ mean, exactly?

“I worried about you,” Steve murmurs. “When I was gone.”

“Me, my prince? Why?”

“My father is a good man,” Steve says, almost defensively. Loki sets his jaw, thinking of Odin watching over a tournament, the complete impassiveness as Loki is revealed as a Jötunn… No. No, he shall not think of that.

“Mine too,” Loki murmurs, equally truthfully.

“I just—” Steve trails off, dragging his hand over his jaw. “I worry, at times, what he would ask of you. That he would push you too far. I feel like there are secrets he keeps from you, that he keeps from all of us.” Almost-alarm is settling heavy in Loki’s belly, and he can feel his hands shift, tightening their grasp on the sack. His thinking of Odin is more than mere coincidence, perhaps – is it possible, he wonders, that the thread of seiðr is connecting to his _own_ subconscious as much as Steve’s?

Loki’s mouth is dry.

“Worry not for me, my prince,” Loki murmurs, feeling his voice harsher than he had intended. “Your father and your kingdom ought have your loyalty before all else.” Steve flinches slightly, leaning away.

“Yes, Loki,” Steve whispers.

And then the dream state is fading.

❅ ❅ ❅

Loki stares down at the page in his diary, as if reading his own handwritten notes will make the whole situation make any more sense. It doesn’t.

  1. _My seiðr has evidently formed some bond between Steve Rogers and I; our bodies thrill at any physical touch, but even with a distance between us, we are tethered together in Steve’s dreams._
  2. _He is not cognizant he is dreaming, does not remember the dreams, and the dream-world itself seems to be loosely based upon the tales of King Arthur, a 5 th century semi-mythical king. I, on the other hand, am very much aware of the dream state when I am dragged into it and continue to recall the dreams when I wake. Why?_
  3. _As for King Arthur himself, he seems to be a figure centred around his duty to his kingdom, Camelot, and I appear to inhabit the role of Merlin, the magical advisor to the king. The tales I have read in books seem not especially different to the tales of the very same figure Fandral had once told me, when he returned from his sojourn upon Midgard some eight centuries hence._
  4. _Making notes isn’t helping._



Sighing, Loki drops his notebook aside, and he gets to his feet.

One benefit of the connection between the two of them, at least, is that his seiðr seems to be flowing better through his body. Piece by piece, the ugly wound upon his neck is beginning to heal, and every night a new piece of the Bifrost’s crystal is worked out from his flesh, but not fast enough.

He cannot drag the fragments out entirely, and the marks they leave are spreading, and what then? What will happen when tiny pieces of the Bifrost’s crystal run through his skin?

_“You are made for nothing more than destruction!” Odin had roared, and Loki had laughed, the sound bitter as seiðr had crackled to the surface of his blue-stained flesh._

_“You want destruction, Father? I will show you destruction!”_

It has been two months, now. How long, Loki wonders, until they repair the Bifrost and leave Asgard to search for him? Odin might not wish to, but Thor will, and Loki cannot bear the idea of returning. How many times, in three millennia, has he left Asgard behind him, only to return to its green shores, all the while dragging his feet?

Too many.

“Not this time,” Loki mutters, and he walks across the room, in desperate need of something to eat. He ignores the pain that throbs through his entire body, getting worse with every day that passes.

❅ ❅ ❅

“Why do you come out here?” Steve asks. Loki glances up from the quartz altar he is bent over, and he peers down at his reflection in the pool of his own blood that rests in the marble bowl atop it. _Why indeed_ , he almost says. _One wonders why your strange little mind has conjured this for me, of all things_.

“It is quiet, and the magic here flows better than in the town,” Loki says instead. Dipping his fingers into the water, he feels the acid tang of his own blood, and he feels bile rise in his throat: here it is, then, his monster’s blood – not a deep scarlet, as the blood of the Æsir, but thickly lilac and hissing with steam where he touches it.

“Why is your blood like that? Instead of red?” Steve asks. Loki draws a symbol upon the air, feeling the protective magic coil ready in his palm, and he pushes it forward, letting itself weave into Steve’s golden armour.

“The magic in my veins changes parts of my physiology,” Loki murmurs. “No power comes without its price, not even magic.” Steve frowns, looking around the clearing, at the edges of the circle, even at the canopy of leafy trees above them. “My blood is bound to the Pendragons, you know.”

“I know.” Loki watches him for a long few moments. This bond isn’t in any of the texts Loki had read of Arthur and Merlin, but he feels it in this strange form – when Uther or Arthur gives him an order… He isn’t compelled to _obey_ , exactly, but he is compelled to take notice. “You will serve me, when I am king.”

“I will advise you,” Loki corrects. “I am not your servant, and neither of you control me any more than you might control any other force of nature. I would advise you to remember that.” Steve doesn’t seem offended. If anything, he sags in _relief_.

“Are you a force of nature?” Steve asks softly.

“Yes,” Loki answers. “I am dangerous, and inhuman, and I am bound by laws greater than either of us. Just because Uther forgets this in favour of his own arrogance, his own hubris, does not mean you ought do the same.” Steve stiffens at Loki’s criticism of his father, his king, but he does not argue.

“What was your father like?” he asks instead. Loki wishes he had argued.

“Much the same,” Loki mutters. “If not worse.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmurs. He reaches out, and his palm touches Loki’s cheek – _Norns_ , what pleasure is in this. Loki gasps, feeling his eyes flutter closed: even like this, in the dream-world, his magic surges at being touched by the figure it has bonded itself to, and Loki cannot help the way he leans into Steve’s palm, feeling his flesh thrum and tingle at the natural, all-encompassing heat of this touch. He can hear Steve’s breathing, speeding as his thumb draws over Loki’s cheekbone. “I feel like this was always meant to happen. We were always meant to touch like this.”

“And what does a boy like you know of destiny?” Loki asks, surprised by the huskiness in his own voice.

“More than you think,” Steve replies lowly.

❅ ❅ ❅

Loki is dying.

He knows it when he wakes, knows it as he stumbles out into the street. The fragments of the Bifrost within him have worked their way through his veins, and he can feel one of them in his very _chest_ , forcing its way through the muscle of his heart, and he is _dying_ —

What else can he do?

He appears before Steve Rogers with a crackle of lightning that causes the lights to flash bright and then darken ( _I am a force of nature_ ), and he falls to his knees before him in a parody of a bow, his hands flat on the ground, his head bowed ( _my blood is bound to the Pendragons)._

“I am dying,” he says hoarsely, and he looks up into the face of the man that stands before him – Uther Pendragon. “I require… Surgery—”

He cannot stand it. He cannot _stand_ the idea of these foolish Midgardians digging their way into his foreign, Jötunn flesh.

“You must be careful,” he says. “My blood is… Acidic, it will— it will harm—” Blood isn’t flowing as it should through his veins, and his vision is darkening. This is death, then. This is death. He feels Steve’s hands upon him, hears his voice although he cannot make out the words, and he lets his head drop against the young soldier’s chest, his magic _surging_ at the physical contact and offering him sustenance where his own lifeblood cannot. “Please,” he hears himself whisper.

“It’s okay,” Steve says. “Pierce, we need to get him to SWORD.”

“SWORD?” Loki laughs, headily. “Sword and shield… Very good, my prince, very good.” And then he is falling backwards into a wine-dark sea, the water rushing in his ears where his own blood will not.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve sits on the edge of Loki’s bed, and he looks down at him. Loki is paler than ever, and the mark at his throat is livid and bright. His long hair hangs lank around his shoulders, the silver jewellery woven into it having lost its polished shine, now dull and grey.

“Are you dying?” Steve asks.

“Yes, my prince,” Loki answers softly. “Do not look so upset. All things must end, after all.”

“Not you,” Steve says quietly, sharply. Loki’s quarters of the castle are usually colder than the rest, but now the air is uncomfortably warm and sticky, oppressive in its humidity, and Steve shifts slightly closer to the other man on the bed. Reaching out, he takes up one of Loki’s limp, pallid hands, and he holds it tightly. That familiar sing of energy burns within him, and he sees Loki’s eyes close as he lets out a short, relieved exhalation. “You’re a force of nature. You’re meant to be infinite.”

“Nothing is truly infinite,” Loki says under his breath. “Even nature itself will crumble, when this planet reaches its end.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a long way off,” Steve says, pressing Loki’s hand to his heart. Loki grunts, his eyelashes fluttering, and Steve feels the crackle of energy between them. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining the lightening of the wound at Loki’s neck, or if it’s really happening— “It’s okay, Loki,” Steve whispers. “Take what you need.”

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve stands with his hands on the edge of the viewing window, his eyes forward. Loki is unconscious, a tube of white plastic shoved down his throat, and his jaw is completely slack, his eyes closed. They hadn’t been able to crack open his ribs – Steve had had to scrub up and get into the OR to do it for them, cracking Loki’s rib cage open and spreading it apart so that they could get to the heart underneath.

Loki’s organs are nothing like a human’s. Steve had stared down at the mess of purple, seen that his lungs were a steely grey and _huge_ , seen that his heart was much almost twice the size of a human’s, had seen the shape of Loki’s liver, of the stomach that seemed to be split into two partitions—

“It’s okay,” the doctor had murmured in his ear. “We can take it from here, Captain.”

And now Steve is powerless to do anything but watch.

He hadn’t been joking about the acidity of his blood. The first nurse had caught a little of it on herself as she’d hooked him up to an IV, and she’d had to rush to wash it off. Now, all the doctors and nurses in the OR are wearing thick, rubber gloves to work, but sometimes a cotton swab or a piece of gauze with hiss with acid steam that rises up into the air.

They’re working on Loki’s heart right now, and Steve stares, utterly horrified, as they pull a chunk of some sort of crystal out of one of its valves. The crystal shines in the light, refracting some of it and dappling the wall with a blood-stained rainbow, and Steve hears the clatter as it hits against the steel bowl.

“You gonna watch the whole thing?” Fury asks quietly. “Seems gory.”

“He saved me,” Steve says quietly. “Least I can do is make sure they return the favour.” Distantly, he feels a vague connection to the body laid out on the table, imagines he can feel the slow, steady beat of Loki’s heart against his own.

The sensation is gone as quickly as it had come.

❅ ❅ ❅

“In order to save him,” says a voice in Steve’s ear, disembodied and impossibly ancient, “you must slay the beast.”

“Where is the beast?” Steve asks. The voice laughs.

“He _is_ the beast,” it says, with no small amount of glee. Steve stares down at Loki where he lays sprawled in his bed, his eyes closed.

“You’re not helping,” Steve says.

“It’s just a _joke_ ,” the voice whispers in his ear. “Look in the bowl.” Steve takes a slow step forward, and he looks into the steel bowl on the side of Loki’s bed, resting on the table. Loki looks like he could be sleeping, his expression entirely peaceful, and the marks around his neck have begun to fade away entirely, not even leaving any scars. In the bowl are a handful of ugly, crystalline shards that are stained with Loki’s blood – he had coughed these up in the nights previous, each of them clattering into the bowl with ugly clanking sounds. “You must take these pieces to the bridge they came from. If you return them, Loki will be healed.” That— Something about that sounds _wrong_.

“Directly?” Steve asks.

For a long few moments, the voice is silent. “What?” it asks, delicately.

“Will Loki be healed by the act of returning the pieces to the bridge,” Steve asks slowly, “or will he be healed by something else, as a consequence of me repairing the bridge?”

“Ha, _damn_ , honey. You’re, uh, you’re pretty smart, huh?” That voice shouldn’t be here. Steve realises all at once that the voice is wrong, that it doesn’t belong to Camelot, and he turns his head, looking wildly around Loki’s quarters, but there is no apparent source. Breath is suddenly impossibly hot against Steve’s ear, and hands are on his hips. “I could heal him, ya know. That’s, uh, that’s within my power.”

“What would you want in return?” Steve asks, trying not to flinch as more of that hot breath laughs against the back of his neck.

“What would you, uh, _offer_?”

“Anything.”

“ _Anything_? Aw, sugar, that’s— That’s so cute. You, uh, you really must have a _sweet_ spot for little Lo-Lo here, huh?”

“He’s mine,” Steve says sharply, suddenly, surprised by the possession that surges through him, and the voice chuckles, low and honey-sweet.

“I’m not trying to take him from you, doll. Let’s see, how about, ah… Shall we make it an IOU, Stevie? Let’s just say that I, ah, rescue your little sorcerer from the clutches of, um, _certain death_ … And then when I ask you for a favour, you make good on it. Sound good?” Steve stares down at Loki on the bed, limp and pallid, breathing shallow. This monster, this strange faerie, could ask _anything_ of him, but—

How can he just let Loki die?

“Okay,” Steve says quietly. “I agree.” An invisible finger taps against the tip of his nose.

“See, sugar, I, uh… I just _knew_ you’d pick the smart choice.”

❅ ❅ ❅

Steve jolts up at the sound of metal clattering on tile, and he stares wildly around himself, momentarily disoriented. He’d fallen asleep in the chair in the corner of Loki’s hospital room, and now he sees that Loki is shifting wildly on the bed, tearing the breathing tube out from his throat so roughly that he spits out _blood_ with it—

“Stop it!” Steve yells, catching hold of his wrists before he can rip the IV out of his arm. Coughing out violet blood, Loki struggles manfully against Steve’s grip, but Steve is stronger than him, particularly with how weak the other guy, and how drugged up. “Loki, stay _still_.” Loki freezes, his ragged breathing audible in the room as his blue eyes turn to look at Steve.

Slowly, he takes in the white-painted walls of the hospital room, the quietly beeping devices beside them. He takes in the IV hooked up to his left arm, and the heart-rate monitor that is pressed tight against his index finger, then the hospital gown he’s wearing, and the light sheets on the bed.

“My chest hurts,” Loki says hoarsely.

“Yeah, that’s because I had to crack you open like a tin can,” Steve says. Loki laughs, and then winces in pain. Distantly, Steve can feel the strange electricity of their touch, feel the way his fingers against Loki’s wrists feel impossibly _right_ , feels some sort of energy that circuits through them both, as if for a moment they’re sharing the same veins. “I think they got it all out. The crystal.”

 _You made a deal_.

Steve frowns, twisting his lips in confusion, and Loki looks up at him, his eyes momentarily glassy.

“A shard of the Bifrost—” Loki whispers, slightly blearily. “I didn’t mean to… I just wanted to stop them from following me. I couldn’t bear to… The amount of power surging in my veins was incomparable, and I couldn’t control my own seiðr, I was so angry, I felt so betrayed, and the Bifrost shattered like glass underneath the burst of energy, but when I fell – I didn’t mean to fall – the Bifrost fell with me. A chunk of it hit me in the neck, nearly decapitated me, and in my hurry to heal myself, I took some of it within me…” Steve loosens the grip he has on Loki’s wrists, letting him lower them slightly, but Loki shifts to interlink their fingers, so that their palms together. His smile isn’t entirely lucid. “You did much the same with me.”

“Did I?” Steve asks, trying to make sense of it all. _Bifrost_ – what the Hell is that? And… Seeth-er? Seiðr? What’s that, another word for Loki’s magic?

“Yes,” Loki whispers, and abruptly he drops back against the pillows. The hospital bed creaks at the sudden shift in weight, and Loki peers up at Steve with defocused, uncomprehending eyes, his mouth open. A little lilac blood is visible at the side of his mouth, dripping slowly down his chin. When it hits the sheet, the sheet _hisses_ , and a little of it burns away. “Your highness, you really must… Must be careful who you tether yourself to.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says quietly. “Go back to sleep. And _don’t_ tear anything else out, okay? You’ll hurt yourself.” For a second, it seems as if Loki will disobey, but then his eyelids flutter, and then droop closed. His hands slacken against Steve’s own, and Steve gently sets them down at his sides, turning toward the door.

When he opens it, Pierce and Fury are just outside, watching him.

“What did he mean?” Pierce asks. “About that Bifrost thing?”

“Damned if I know,” Steve says, looking back to Loki. At least he’s breathing on his own now, his chest rising and falling to a slow, easy rhythm. “I think he’s gonna make it.” He reaches up, dragging his palm over his mouth, and he pulls the door shut behind him. _Your highness_ , Loki had called him.

 _You made a deal_.

❅ ❅ ❅

Loki is standing in the palace grounds, resting heavily on a tall, golden staff. It’s a spear, Steve realises as he comes closer, forged of gold with a tip that glints in the sunlight, and when Loki catches his eyes, he follows Steve’s gaze to the spear. “This is Gungnir,” he says, slowly. “It was my father’s.”

“Gungnir,” Steve repeats. Loki is resting heavily on the spear, gripping tightly at it to keep himself on his feet, and Steve thinks of the breath on the backs of his ears and his neck, thinks of the deal he’d made. “Should you be walking around?”

“My magic will repair most of the damage,” Loki murmurs quietly. “I can withstand quite a lot of injury that would easily kill the average citizen of Camelot. Come.” Loki moves very slowly, favouring his left side and continuing to lean on the spear as they move across the grounds, until Loki can sink blissfully down against a stone bench. Steve sits down beside him, and he studies Loki’s tired, haggard features, the bags under his eyes.

“I made a deal,” Steve says. Loki glances up at him, his dark brows furrowing, his lips parting.

“What? What do you mean?” Loki demands, his voice abruptly urgent. “With _whom_?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says.

“For what price?” Loki asks, softly, sharply. “You bartered for my good health, and for what price?”

“He called it an IOU,” Steve says. “Said we’d figure it out when we got to it.”

“You _fool_ ,” Loki scolds him. He is breathing heavily all of a sudden, and it must hurt him, because a lilac flush is heavy in his cheeks, and short sounds of pain escape with every exhalation. “You might have doomed us all.”

“And what was the alternative?” Steve demands. “Dooming _you_?” Loki clenches his teeth together, and Steve watches him for a long few moments before he says, “He said… He wanted me to repair the bridge. That those shards came from. Tried to trick me into doing it. Would _that_ have been better?”

“No, my prince,” Loki mutters, his eyes searching the air in front of them as if the air might offer an explanation for what has happened. “Of course not. Describe this stranger to me.”

“I can’t. I never saw him.” Loki sighs.

“You must not tell your father,” he says quietly. “Uther… He would look badly upon this. Your self-sacrifice is nothing short of stupid, and foolhardy, but I am not ungrateful. You are _kind_ , your highness, and that shall be your undoing.” Loki sighs, and Steve looks out over the grounds around them. It irritates him, on some level, that Loki is _annoyed_ at Steve having saved him – agreeing to the stranger’s offer had been a desperate decision, made in the heat of the moment, and he _knows_ it was stupid, but to let Loki die…

No. Steve made the right decision, he knows that.

And Loki… Steve’s gaze flits down to Loki’s thin lips, and he thinks of Loki in the frame of his doorway, his skin shining with moisture and his lips parted in remembered pleasure. Had he had a partner with him, that day, Steve wonders? Or had he been on his own?

“Do you—” He catches himself before he finishes the statement. Loki is staring at him, his eyes shining with perplexity. “Have you got a— A woman?”

“A woman?” Loki repeats, baffled. “For what?”

“I meant… Or a man. In your bed.” Understanding comes to Loki’s expression all at once, schooling his tired, marble features into a sort of patronising neutrality.

“I hardly see how that is any of your business, your highness,” Loki says, tone _snooty_ , and Steve reaches out, grabbing the front of his robes. He is careful not to touch hard to Loki’s actual chest, and he delights in the way Loki exhales shakily, at the way he stiffens but leans _into_ the grip at his robes. He leans right in, and Steve closes the last inch or so of distance between them, pressing their lips together—

God, this is so much better than touching Loki’s hands. Power surges against Steve’s lips, tingling over the skin, and he kisses Loki hard, feeling the way the other man gives way to him despite how much more _powerful_ he is than Steve himself. Is this what it feels like, truly, to have a force of nature under your hand, under your mouth? Steve’s lips are electrified, and the power of Loki’s magic burns through his veins, hot and heady and desperately good, and Steve coils a hand in Loki’s long hair, gripping tightly at it to pull Loki closer.

Loki whimpers when Steve drags Loki’s lower lip between his teeth, and Steve swallows the sound, wanting to know what it will be like to have Loki spread out in bed, to feel the court wizard give all he _can_ to the crown prince—

❅ ❅ ❅

Pain is thick in Loki’s chest as he hazily returns to consciousness. He can feel where his ribs were pressed bodily apart by some sort of tool, and his very _heart_ feels soft and tender, still healing from new injuries. Moreover, he is not alone in the room. He hisses as a too-hot hand presses against his chest.

“Hey, hey there, sweet thing, you just, uh, you keep still.” Magic radiates from the large spread of the hand, and Loki groans, tipping his head back and closing his eyes tightly shut as he feels his bone and flesh knit more securely together, as the foreign energy _heals_ him. Some of the pain begins to fade away, and Loki cannot help the sound of relief that ekes out from between his clenched teeth. “See, uh, those humans – ain’t they cute? – they’re not gonna know the difference between _my_ magic and your magic. They’ll put this down to, uh, natural regeneration on your part.”

“You’re an Elder,” Loki grunts.

 _“Huh_ ,” his healer says, surprise sounding in his tone. Loki can _taste_ the ancient energy that radiates from him, and the healer seems to dispense with whatever gentleness he had. Power rages through Loki’s chest, forcing his body to knit itself back together, and he just manages to bite back a cry at the oddity of the sensation—

And then it is over. All at once, Loki can breathe easily, with no pain in his chest whatsoever, and he opens his eyes to look at his saviour.

The Elder’s skin is a golden brown, his eyes the colour of honey, and to match the kohl that lines his eyes in deep blue, an iridescent stripe of shining blue paint marks his chin. Loki has seen such a mark before, daubed in black on the chin of Taneleer Tivan, out in his terrarium on Knowhere, and hidden beneath the thick, white beard of Ord Zyons, his stripe the brightest viridian.

“Which one are you?” Loki asks, slightly hoarsely. The Elder reaches for a glass of water on the side beside them, and he brings it to Loki’s lips, allowing him to drink. He refuses to draw the glass away until Loki drains the whole thing, and after, Loki coughs against the back of his hand.

“I’m, uh, I’m the _Grandmaster_ ,” the Elder purrs.

“And your obsession?” Loki presses.

“Golly, you, ha, you sure ask a lot of questions.”

“Yes,” Loki agrees. The Grandmaster reaches out, gripping at the sides of Loki’s jaw, and Loki is too exhausted to pull away, too exhausted to try to fight it. The Grandmaster’s fingertips and thumb are _achingly_ hot, feeling like they must be burning Loki’s very skin, but he forces himself not to flinch. “Your deal was with him. Not with me.”

“Aha, you’re not thinking with your _good_ brain, honey,” the Grandmaster purrs, squeezing a little tighter. “See, in the universe Stevie and I made our little deal – you know, pocket universes like that, they really just, ha, they really just get me _going_ – you’re, um, how do I put this… _Chattel_. You exist as a pledge to the Pendragons – they hold your leash. And, mmm, your magic can’t really tell the difference between _that_ universe… And this one. You know what that means?”

Loki feels fear, genuine fear, burst inside him, and the Grandmaster _smiles_ , showing his teeth. “That’s _right_. If I, uh, if I choose to call in my IOU with _you_ as my, aha, little prize… Well, Stevie can just _give_ you to me. Well. Loan you, anyways.”

“And why would an Elder want— Want something so paltry and disgraced as myself?” The Grandmaster bats his eyelashes, the movement slightly clumsy – Loki can’t quite tell if it’s on purpose, or if the oddity of the gesture is intended as a double-eyed _wink_.

“Aw, I, ha, see, I _like_ that, Loki. Look at you, trying to, uh, sell yourself short, like you think that’ll _work_.” He taps his fingers against the side of Loki’s cheek, chuckling in amusement. “I just love the— Ha, the poetry of it. _You_ indebted to _him_ indebted to _me_ for saving _you_ … He’s a smart cookie though. Didn’t want to, uh, repair the Bifrost.”

“He told me,” Loki murmurs. The Grandmaster draws his hand away, and Loki feels relief crackle within him, even as he lies back against the pillows. “You can… You can see the dimension forming, then? I’ve never seen a life debt manifesting in this way.”

“Mmm, _weird_ , isn’t it?” the Grandmaster murmurs, clucking his tongue, and then he stands up from the side of Loki’s bed. “Well, kitty, I’ll— I’ll be seeing ya. _Real_ soon/”

And just like that, the Grandmaster is gone, fading into the air as if he was never here.

Loki closes his eyes, and presses his head back against the bed, just for a moment, as he gathers his thoughts. Then, slowly, and with no small amount of discomfort, he begins to disentangle himself from the Midgardian medical instruments that keep him in place.

❅ ❅ ❅

“Sir!” Steve hears, and he looks down the corridor to see Agent Coulson with his gun drawn, aimed right at Loki. Loki is rolling his eyes, and he puts his hands on his hips through the thin, sheer material of his hospital gown, staring Coulson down. “Get back into your room!”

“And what will you do, young man? Shoot me with one of your _bullets_?” Loki’s tone is dry and dripping with sarcasm, irritation showing on his face. “I promise you – it shall scarcely dent my flesh.”

“Loki,” Steve says, tapping Coulson on the shoulder and gesturing for him to holster his weapon. “Get back in bed.”

“I require no more bed rest,” Loki says archly. “I require clean clothes, and a hot bath.”

“You’re not gonna get a hot bath. This is a government facility. It’s a cold shower or bust.”

“Just the clothes, then,” Loki mutters. Leaning heavily against the wall, he closes his eyes for a moment, and Steve watches as the hospital gown gives way to a shirt and trousers, deep green and clinging tight to Loki’s form. Just _using_ the magic seems to make Loki sway, however, and Steve rushes forward to catch him before he can fall.

“Take it _easy_ ,” Steve orders, and Loki laughs breathlessly, leaning into Steve’s touch. Heat surges over Steve’s skin at the physical contact, making all of his hairs stand on end, and Loki exhales.

“That’s better,” he mutters. “Will you help me to that sofa?”

“Yeah, here—” Steve supports Loki under the shoulder, letting Loki lean on him as they move into the waiting room of the little infirmary, and they sit down heavily together. Loki doesn’t pull away – instead, he leans right against Steve’s heat, as if leeching some of his energy, which… Maybe that _is_ what he’s doing. But if he’s doing it, he obviously feels he needs to. “Coulson, get Fury.”

“Yessir,” Coulson says, and he rushes off down the corridor.

“Lo— Loki?” Loki is fast asleep. His head is lolled to the side, his eyes closed… But he looks healthier than he had before, albeit only marginally. _God_. Pressed against Steve’s side as he is, he can feel how cool Loki’s body is, and yet… This feels familiar, somehow.

“Is he asleep?” Fury asks, arching an eyebrow.

“His magic, I think,” Steve mutters. “He’s a little unpredictable right now.”

“Yeah, unpredictable is it,” Fury replies easily. “He’s up and at ‘em though – that’s a good sign.”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly. _You made a deal_. The four words echo in his head once again, and he tries to shake them free. “Yeah.” There’s something in Fury’s face, a momentary, pinched discomfort, and Steve sighs, running his hand through his hair. “I don’t want to wake him up. I don’t know how much of this he actually _needs_ right now.”

“Just… Be careful,” Fury says in an undertone. “You know, it kinda looks— It’ll give people the wrong idea. If you let him cling to you like that.” Understanding settles hard in Steve’s belly like a stone.

“Let ‘em think what they want,” he mutters, keeping his expression neutral, even as his every instinct screams for him to shove the unconscious alien away from him. “This ain’t the time to forego health for the sake of prejudice.”

“Okay, Cap,” Fury murmurs. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, yeah, I know, I have _another_ Stoki longfic going on too, but this idea, it was just too fun to resist playing with!
> 
> Feel free to drop me a line on [my Tumblr!](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/ask) Requests are always open, ditto questions about fic, et cetera.


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